


Minos and the Labyrinth

by Masu_Trout



Category: Soul Calibur
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Hallucinations, Loyalty, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 05:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12029022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Voldo guards his master well.





	Minos and the Labyrinth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piinutbutter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/gifts).



The scent of salt is in the air, the taste of iron on his tongue. Water drips steadily somewhere off to his left. Far away, down down below, his master is calling for him.

Voldo holds very still. He breathes in through his mouth until the strain of pulling for air around the thick leather gag makes him light-headed. Manas and Ayus are sitting faithfully in his grasp. He draws the left sister up, settles her against the meat of his shoulder blade. Not pressing in. Not yet. He'd hate to ruin an outfit his master had commissioned for him by staining it with blood.

The air down here breeds hallucinations. That he has no eyes to see means only that his have taken other forms. Fresh ocean spray is thick in the air around him— _”We're on the trail,” Vercci said, his eyes alight with a strange fire as the ship lurched under their feet, “we'll find it soon, I know it.”_ —and his master's screams keep growing louder.

He wants to be let out. He wants to reclaim his rightful place at the head of his fleet, with Voldo kneeling by his side. He wants—

Voldo presses Ayus in, bites down on a sharp grunt as the blade slides through the meat of his body like a fish through still water. His master wants nothing anymore, save for Voldo to carry out his last wish.

There are mercenaries who would break into his master's tombs, thieves who would desecrate the Money Pit and make off with its treasures. Voldo is the last and best line of defense. He cannot afford to lose himself to madness.

His mouth still tastes of salt, though now it's from the much more familiar taste of blood. He must have bitten his tongue earlier. The dripping water is real, too, and he follows the echoing noise to a small pool forming at the base of a massive statue. Voldo pulls aside his gag and drinks deep before replacing the leather once more.

The sharp pain clears his head somewhat, and slaking his thirst helps too. Whispers breed down here. The smallest noise can become a cacophony once it's picked up and carried by one of his master's elegant statues or passed through one of his ornately-carved corridors. Remembering what's real is a task unto its own. Sometimes Voldo comes across thieves who don't even bother to try and fight him—they just sit, listlessly, and carry on conversations with the piles of gold and gems around them. They've become like lifeless dolls; they don't flinch when he walks near them and they don't scream when he sinks Manas and Ayus into their throats. 

(His duty is to kill them as he finds them, but sometimes Voldo sits and listens for a while first. It is reassuring to witness another's insanity, to know that you have not stooped to its lowest levels yet.)

Still. Even with the hallucinations banished, there is a noise here that should not be. Beyond the dripping water, beyond the patter of rats' feet, beyond even the ambient sounds of treasures shifting and settling under their own weight—it is there. A rattle, a shifting sound of leather-on-metal that he can't put a simple explanation to.

Voldo makes a sound of excitement deep in the back of his throat. More have come. It's time.

 _Master_ , he thinks, half-giddy, _Master, watch me._

The gold coins that roll loose on the floor make walking a danger when you can't see your way. Instead, Voldo drops to all fours and sinks Manas and Ayus into the piles of treasure until they press against the stone beneath. The blades are too sturdy to be damaged by mere gold or stone, and they give him an anchor to hold to as he scurries along the floor of the Money Pit. When the piles of treasure grow too deep or treacherous to navigate, he clings instead to the walls and moves like a spider. (Once, in a tight corridor, he even takes to the ceiling with his hands and feet above his head and his spine bent like a like the bow of a ship, just so he can feel the joy of gravity unseating around him.)

The tomb-robbers are far above him, but Voldo knows the paths here better than any other living man and it's only minutes before he finds himself emerging into an alcove far above the thieves. He digs in with his katars and clings to the side wall as he scurries to a well-hidden vantage point. Voldo can hear the faint crackle of torches from below, but even if they think to look up there's no chance their meager light will penetrate this far. 

Sound, on the other hand, carries very well.

Every bone in his body wants to drop, to descend into their midst and rend flesh from bone, but he holds himself still. Ever since he was young his personality has tended toward unthinking haste—Vercci worked hard to train that from him, to show him how much more effective brutality could become when he combined it with focus and foresight.

( _”Like this,” the stranger said, and before Voldo could move there was a great curved sword pressed against his jugular. “Your body is a weapon, and a weapon is only as deadly as its wielder is skilled. I won't have some mindless animal as my bodyguard.”_

 _Voldo had lost four brothers to war, and until this strange man had picked him up off the street he'd been fully aware he would become number five someday. It was a fate he'd long since become resigned to—certainly there were worse ways to die in this world. A job was one thing, but if this odd man expected any sort of_ gratitude _out of him then he was going to find himself sorely disappointed. He was here to kill what the merchant wanted dead, not to philosophize about battle strategies._

_Before he could tell his new employer exactly what he thought, the sword tipped down and away from his throat. Voldo stepped backwards, eager to get some distance between himself and that blade, but froze when the man glared at him._

_“You see?” he snapped, gesturing with the massive blade as though it were an extension of his body. “You move more fluidly than any man I've ever seen, and yet you move_ away from me _. Didn't you tell me you'd happily see me dead? Aren't you desperate to run back to the battlefield and throw yourself onto the end of some foreign mercenary's sword? My weapon was turned away. You could have had my head if you'd pressed the moment. Why did you hesitate?”_

 _The retort Voldo had been planning died on his throat as confusion took its place. He'd never had an employer get upset about_ not _being murdered before._

_And yet. It wasn't a bad question. They were, at Vercci's insistence, completely alone on the training grounds. One quick swipe and he could have taken off the man's head, slipped through one of the manor's windows, and made off with enough gold to keep him living large for years. It certainly wasn't his morals that had held him back, and it wasn't fear either. Why hadn't he struck?_

_The only thing Voldo could think of was that massive blade, wielded expertly by a man who shouldn't even be big enough to hold it straight. Voldo had scoffed at the idea of being trained by a man who made his living selling weapons rather than using them—he already knew how to kill, and kill, and kill again—but under his new employer's hands cruelty became something close to art. It wasn't hard to be intrigued by such a thing._

_If he was just a touch curious, well… what of it?_

_No need to tell all that to Vercci, though. Voldo only raised his daggers once more.“Next time, I won't hesitate.”_

_Vercci smiled. “Good.” And then he was moving again, wheeling closer for a strike, and all unnecessary thoughts faded away as Voldo's world narrowed to encompass only the next breath, the next heartbeat, the adrenaline rushing through his veins._

_Voldo lived for battle. He had to admit his new employer was good at making him feel alive._ )

He shakes himself from the memories with a soft sigh. The past seems so close, here, with his master's stone-carved likeness a scarce few meters away. The stone here still smells faintly of Vercci's favorite spices—another hallucination, perhaps, but a persistent one. The intruders must see the statue by now. He wonders if any of them understand what it truly means, if they can so much as comprehend the greatness of the man it is meant to represent.

Not likely. Perhaps if these petty thieves lived to be a thousand, one of them might manage something worthy of a cheap wooden carving.

Three of them stand beneath him now, but with the way the scent of blood and organ matter sticks to them there's probably another corpse lying somewhere for him to collect. (Hopefully it didn't happen near his master's collection of tapestries; Voldo's always careful about where he sets his traps, but somehow these thieves keep managing to die in inconvenient places regardless of his efforts. As worthless in death as they were in life.) 

The one furthest to the front has a heavy tread and a deep voice. The clanking sound of metal-on-metal echoes each time he walks—it must be a heavy sword and a solid set of armor to make such a racket. Voldo changes his plan of attack as he listens to the metallic footsteps; he'll want to preserve the armor. If the workmanship is of good quality, it might make a decent addition to Vercci's collection. 

A man and a woman following behind him each seem far more cowed. They walk quietly, flinching at corners and unexpected sounds. The woman's an archer—he can hear the rattle of the arrows in her quiver—and the second man's difficult to pinpoint. He fights with his fists, perhaps, or else a short weapon. Anything larger and Voldo would have heard it by now.

The three talk to each other in hushed whispers that sound as clear as a symphony to Voldo's ears. 

“This was a bad idea,” the smaller man says, over and over again, “I told you, I _told_ you, this was a bad idea…”

The bigger one bears it in silence for a few long minutes as they trudge closer to Voldo's position, before finally his boots scrape against the ground in a sharp movement and he snaps “Can't you make him _stop_? If he's going to panic, he should wait until we make it back out. He'll have treasure enough to comfort him then.”

The woman sighs. “Will he? Will any of us?” She's not so panicked as her fellow, but Voldo can hear the deep despair in her voice.

“What?”

“We've seen nothing more than stone and bones and tripwires. You were the one who the one who told us there was a treasure to be had here. _You're_ the one who won't turn back.”

Armor creaks and groans, the sound of a warrior shifting into a battle stance. The wooden clatter of a bow sliding against leather acts as its counterpoint. She hasn't drawn it, not yet, but Voldo can feel the tension growing.

“We can't turn back yet. We haven't found the treasure.”

Somewhere behind the two of them, the smaller man mutters, “This was a bad idea, we shouldn't _be_ here.” 

At least one of them has the right idea.

“And what if there is no treasure to find? What if it's all rats and saltwater and _trash_ and you lead us wandering in circles until we all die?”

At that, Voldo's patience drops out from beneath him. Vercci had gone to great lengths to conceal the extent of his fortune, true, but he would be enraged to hear someone dismiss its existence entirely.

No, that's not right—he _is_ enraged. His anger is swelling up, spilling out from between the pores of the stone, filtering into the cavernous room like a toxin. His master has been disrespected by these know-nothings, these petty thieves and scoundrels with no ambition of their own, and though Voldo's hands are shaking and his pulse is racing he isn't angry.

This isn't his anger, after all. He's a vessel to hold his master's rage, to pour it out onto the deserving.

( _Kill them_ , he hears his master command, _now_ , and it is madness to listen to a dead man but it is disloyalty to disobey Vercci. Voldo knows which he would rather be guilty of.)

Voldo lets go of his perch and drops like a stone. A hand here to slow his fall, a foot there to shift the direction of it—he's followed these paths a thousand times before. 

This is his master's home. He will defend it.

The woman is the first to react to the sound of his feet and his katars smacking against the floor. She turns and lets out a strangled gasp of horror, but by the time she gets to “What _is_ —” he's already closed the gap between them. 

Her bow is useless at close range. He bats the clumsy swing aside and hisses at her so that she stumbles back. For one sliver of a moment, she _screams_ ; in the next, her voice has turned to a wet gurgle around Manas's prongs in her chest. Voldo gurgles back at her, a little bit mocking and a little bit angry. He forces her bow out of her hands and to the floor when she tries for one more strike.

Tenacity. He'll give her that. Though she must know she's dying, there's more anger than fear in her scent. He holds her there for a moment, until her labored breathing slows, then lets the body drop to the floor. 

“What…” The man in the armor takes a clanking step backwards. “What _are_ you?”

It's a pretty easy question to answer (or it would be, had he speech still), but Voldo feels no desire to try. Few would understand that _bodyguard_ is quite literal in his case, that when one is truly devoted the task goes beyond protecting merely the living body. Instead, he only bows in the thief's general direction. Blood flicks off from the end of his katars with the extravagant motion to splatter against the floor.

The hulking man draws his sword. Voldo takes a step back. He doesn't want to face this one just yet, not when there's still an unpredictable target lurking about.

“Stand and fight, freak!” The massive blade whistles as it swings through the air. Voldo drops backward to avoid the blow, landing on his katars with his stomach towards the ceiling. An easy enough position to claim the advantage from, but instead he takes the moment to skitter away.

He can still hear the muttering. “This isn't right, this isn't _right_ …” The frightened man has his weapon drawn—Voldo can hear the way his grip flexes and shakes around a set of what must be leather-handled daggers—but he's clearly too far gone to respond in time. A single strike is all it takes: Voldo swings back up to stand on his feet and cleaves the man from groin to collar with the motion.

The scent is indescribably awful. Blood and fluids and half-digested food spill out from the corpse's torn belly as it drops to the ground. Voldo's caught between wishing he'd gone for a cleaner kill and being glad he's far away from his master's more delicate treasures.

This time, the hulking man doesn't bother with bravado. He just roars with anger, wordless and shaking, like a wild beast gone mad with rage. Voldo shrieks back a challenge as he paces in careful circles just out of his opponent's reach.

He has the advantage here. The man is crippled by madness, wild and wordless and shaking. Unable to control himself. It's just how Voldo was, the night Vercci died, but that was long, long ago. He's had time since to hone the grief into a weapon, to make sure he knows his purpose. 

Neither of them have anything left to lose, other than their own worthless existences, but the thief still fights like he has something to live for. 

He dodges Voldo's wild slash, then steps back to avoid a jab towards his eyes. Stupid moves. Amateur. He could have moved around the blow and taken it on his shoulder instead; neither of them would be likely to survive an extreme close-range fight like that. With him guarding himself, though, it's easy work to feint to one side and then—with all the precision of an artisan—slide one of Manas's thin blades into the gap between breastplate and helm.

“No,” the man says, “ _no_ ,” and then his knees sag beneath him and it is all Voldo can do to catch the body and help it down gently to the floor. Wouldn't want to damage the metalwork. It does seem to be a fine piece of mail.

In the aftermath, Voldo takes a moment to breathe. Adrenaline still courses through his body. It leaves him shaking and feeling all but weightless. He loves his master more than ever in moments like these: it is thanks to Vercci that he still has a purpose. Even in death, he guides Voldo still—he left him a home and a task and a reason to kill. It's only those things that keep him from descending into unreasoning animal-madness.

There are tasks to perform now, he knows. He needs to drop the bodies into the ocean, clean the blood and the filth away, polish the armor until it is fit to take its place among Vercci's lesser treasures. Now, though… there's a moment of stillness in the great cavern, just Voldo and the statue and the silence.

He drops to his hands and knees, kisses the cold stone in front of his master's figure.

He is grateful. He will always be grateful.


End file.
